Darfur: Sixth Anniversary of a Genocide

On Feb. 26, 2003, Muslim militants of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) launched their first attack on Sudanese government forces in a vast, little-known western region of Sudan called Darfur. The two groups were tired of being treated like second-class citizens, or worse, by the government.

In response, the Sudanese government recruited and armed Arab horsemen called Janjaweed ("devils on horseback") and set them loose on the region's militants and civilians. Darfur soon came to be a synonym for genocide. More than 200,000 people have been killed since and 2.2 million people displaced. About 4.2 million people in the region depend on aid hand-outs. Violence "continues to rage" this week in Darfur, according to the United Nations.

Yet the anniversary of the genocide came and went with hardly a peep of recognition from the press except for a notable piece in South Africa's Johannesburg Mail & Guardian that was picked up by Agence France Press. Instead, attention focused on Richard Williamson, the United States' new envoy to Sudan, who met with a Sudanese minister and said nothing that hasn't been said for six years.

See Also:

• Darfur: The Making of a Genocide
• Deborah White: Do Your Part to Stop Drastic Deterioration in Darfur